Saturday, May 31, 2014

Algiers, May 30 (Prensa Latina) Foreign Ministers of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) agreed on the need to strengthen mutual solidarity to materialize development projects, said sources here.

The statement is included in the Final Declaration of the 17th Meeting of Foreign Ministers, which was held on Wednesday and Thursday and attended by more than 80 foreign ministers and senior representatives.

Thursday, May 29, 2014

A former Indonesian maid is leading calls for better treatment of migrant workers in Hong Kong.

Time magazine recently named a 23-year-old Indonesian woman who'd been working as a maid in Hong Kong among its top 100 Most Influential People of 2014.

Erwiana Sulistyaningsih received extensive publicity after returning home with multiple injuries, allegedly inflicted by an employer who didn't even pay her.

Time magazine says her willingness to speak out has drawn attention to the plight of many thousands of vulnerable and often invisible migrant workers in Hong Kong.Samantha Yap reports on efforts to win higher wages and better conditions for these foreign workers in the Chinese special administrative region.

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

SINGAPORE — The Government is finalising plans to extend the re-employment age from 65 to 67, with details coming up later ths year, said Senior Minister of State for Health and Manpower Amy Khor in Parliament today (May 27).

The Tripartite Committee on the Employability of Older Workers (Tricom) is ironing out its execution, including reviewing guidelines on wage adjustment and updating the law.

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Mainland artist Rona Hu has always conveyed strong political and social messages through her work, and her latest exhibition, "The Underprivileged" is no exception.

As with many of her paintings, Hu captures typical people in contemporary society. For this show - which runs until May 31 - she focuses on rural migrant workers, an underprivileged class of more than 260 million people suffering from marginalisation and discrimination.

KUALA TERENGGANU, May 25 (Bernama) -- Cuepacs suggests the government to introduce a new allowance, especially for civil servants who live in the city to meet the escalating cost of living.

Its president, Azih Muda, said the 'City Allowance' (Elaun Bandar) proposed between RM400-RM500 a month would certainly reduce the financial burden faced by civil servants, especially those living in the cities and metropolitan areas like Kuala Lumpur, Johor Bahru and Ipoh.

"It's time for the government to introduce such an allowance because we are concerned that if we do not help civil servants, their focus in their work will be interrupted when they chose to do a side job to earn an additional income," he told reporters after a meeting with the state civil servants which was officiated by the director-general of Public Service, Tan Sri Mohamad Zabidi Zainal here, Sunday.

Elaborating further, Azih said the 'City Allowance' is different from the 'Cost of Living Allowance' (COLA) because it's only for about 65 per cent of civil servants who live in the city.

"We also hope the government will standardise the COLA for civil servants nationwide so that all can enjoy the same rate," he added.-Bernama.source:::sss

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

This year’s theme “Families Matter for the Achievement of Development Goals” recognises the role of families and policies to support them in achieving internationally agreed development goals.

Today’s families are diverse, defying traditional models such as those based on a male breadwinner and jobs for life. There are now many single parent households – often women, and grandparent-headed households. In their different shapes and sizes, families are active agents of development. Yet their contribution, actual and potential, is often undervalued and inadequately supported, and many families are under severe pressure.

The recent statement by Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) president
Datuk Dr N.K.S Tharmaseelam, undermines the integrity of Malaysian Medical
Profession by stating that employers has the right to question and decide the
validity of Medical Certificate and by
further asserting that MCs is a mere
recommendation. If a medical practitioner has acted beyond his duty and ethic,
than rightly that practitioner should be taken to task and not shift the burden
of deciding ones health to the hand and sole discretion of a lay person and in
this case, the employers

The Malaysian Trade Union Congress (MTUC) wants the government to scrap the proposed Goods and Services Tax (GST) planned for implementation starting April next year.

MTUC Exco and Council Member, Sivanathan Arumugam, said the organization opposed the introduction of GST as it fears the new tax system would burden the people especially the low and medium income groups, who would have to pay more for the same products and services they are using today.

KUALA LUMPUR, May 5 (Bernama) -- The Employees Provident Fund (EPF) said on Monday that 278 names of defaulting company directors have been submitted to the Immigration Department in the first quarter of this year to prevent them from leaving the country without first settling their employees' EPF contribution arrears as provided under Section 39 of the EPF Act 1991.

PETALING JAYA: The Malaysian Trades Union Congress (MTUC) on Sunday called on the Labour Department to strictly enforce the new retirement age of 60 for private sector employees that came into force on July 1 last year.

The Malaysian Trades Union Congress (MTUC) has urged the Social Security Organisation (Socso) to provide 24-hour insurance coverage to its contributors as a large number of the country’s workforce cannot afford the high premiums.

Penang MTUC chairman S. Ravindran said yesterday many of its members’ families were left in the lurch when their sole breadwinners died without having any insurance coverage.

Friday, May 2, 2014

JAKARTA, Indonesia–More than 100,000 union members are expected to fill the streets of Indonesia’s capital today to demand higher wages, better health care and more workplace protections.

“Minimum wages in Indonesia are far behind those in Thailand, the Philippines, and Malaysia…even when living costs in those countries are relatively similar with Indonesia,” said Said Iqbal, president of the Indonesian Trade Union Confederation, or KSPI, one of the country’s largest workers’ groups.

Countries around the region mark Labor Day on the first of May, but this is the first year Indonesia has recognized it as a national holiday. It’s also important this year because it comes just months before voters select a new president, with current President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono having reached his two-term limit.

Popular presidential contender Jakarta Gov. Joko Widodo won points with workers after taking office in 2012 by agreeing to raise the capital’s minimum wage by a hefty 44%. Workers had been rallying for months for a pay increase, at times tying up traffic in the city and forcing factories to close – albeit briefly.

Getting Mr. Widodo to bow to their demands was a sign of how much trade unions had evolved in the relatively short time since former autocrat President Suharto stepped down from power in 1998.

An Indonesian worker gestures while riding a motobike as he takes part in a rally in Jakarta on Oct. 31 during a two-day nationwide strike.

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

In the years since, a period of relatively robust economic growth—Indonesia’s economy has expanded by an average 5.8% in the past five years—promptedmany analysts to forecast that the country would become one of the world’s top 10 economies by 2030.

Now, the increasingly confident unions want to get a bigger share of that growth.

This year workers are demanding a 30% increase to next year’s minimum wage, better health care coverage and pensions, and better protection for maids following a series of recent cases of abuse by employers. They also want contract work to be abolished and some are pushing for extra benefits for over a million part-time teachers.

Around 10,000 part-time teachers are expected to participate in the rally, along with several dozen journalists. Up to 400,000 other union members will join rallies across the country. Although the rallies are likely to be smaller than in past years and turnout is usually lower than estimated, Jakarta will deploy up to 20,000 police to ensure security.

After workers’ stepped up their pressure for higher wages in 2012, government officials acknowledged that Indonesia could no longer rely on cheap labor and would need to work harder to train workers to enter higher-value industries.

At the same time, however, they called for sensibility and asked workers’ to moderate their demands.

“Let us not kill the goose that lays the golden eggs,” Vice President Boediono said during a gathering of businesses people and investors back in 2012. He was referring to demands from workers at the time for pay increases of up to 80% — demands that many analysts warned could drive away investors and harm industries like manufacturing, which support millions of the Indonesian workforce.

Critics argue that while the minimum wage has increased in recent years, it hasn’t led to a higher rate of productivity and has put pressure on the revenues of many small and medium-sized businesses.

However, Mr. Iqbal says productivity is similar with other Southeast Asian countries and Indonesian workers are entitled to higher paychecks.